Category Archives: Social Media Marketing

Social Media for business continues to evolve and mature. It’s now official. Instagram is bigger than Twitter! And with recent announcements there are exciting opportunities to exploit Instagram for business growth that exceed those of using Twitter. And they may even exceed Facebook marketing opportunities for the foreseeable future, depending on your business audience.

If you’re not using Instagram for marketing your business, it’s time to consider it seriously. 93% of marketers are using Facebook, but only 36% are using Instagram.

Instagram (owned by Facebook) recently announced that they have reached over 400 million monthly active users. 100 million of those have joined since December, so growth has recently accelerated. This number surpasses the number of active Twitter users.

As I have spoken with business people in my local area recently I have seen and heard very little interest or engagement in using Twitter. But those in the 20-45 year old range tell me they are spending more time on Instagram as are their friends. These informal conversations seem to support the trend in the data.

28% of the US population now uses Instagram. But Instagram is not just a U.S. phenomenon. 75% of its user base is outside of the U.S.

Instagram has also just announced that any business can now run ads on the platform by using the Facebook ad infrastructure available via Power Editor.

Why You May See Higher Marketing ROI from Instagram

There are several reasons why you may generate more return on your marketing investment with Instagram versus either Twitter or Facebook.

It’s big and growing fast. You can now reach more people than on Twitter and growth appears to be accelerating. While Twitter is large, its user growth has slowed considerably. And equally concerning is that less than half of Twitter users even check it daily.

It’s not overly crowded yet by marketers. Only 36% of marketers are using Instagram so far, so the chances of your message being seen and gaining user engagement is still much higher than on other platforms already crowded with marketers, e.g. Facebook. That will change over time as the platform gains popularity and more business features are added, but not for a while.

User engagement is higher. 3.1% of posts on Instagram have user engagement of likes, comments, and re-posting. This is way above Twitter and Facebook where post engagement is 0.7% or less. (Source: SocialBakers research)

Organic reach is not limited. It’s like the good old days of Facebook. Your business post is displayed to 100% of your followers. Contrast that with the 2-6% of followers that you can reach organically on Facebook now. This benefit probably won’t last as the platform grows and Facebook looks for more ways to monetize the audience. But for now you can build relationships with your followers easily and consistently without paid advertising or post boosts.

Younger people use it more than Facebook. According to data from a Cowen & Company study, 44% of 18-29 year olds use Instagram while only 23% of them use Facebook regularly. It’s about the same usage for those in the 30-44 year old age range with 27-28% using each platform. Instagram usage is significantly lower for people over 45 years old as compared to Facebook usage. If a key audience for your business is younger people making purchases, you may see greater bottom line results from Instagram marketing than from Facebook. As it gains in popularity I also expect to see usage increase across all age ranges the way that it did for Facebook.

You have access to all the Facebook user data. Because Instagram is owned by Facebook, you not only have access to user data from Instagram, but also from the same users on Facebook. A whopping 94% of Instagram users also have Facebook. So the wealth of user data that Facebook has aggregated on each of us is also available for Instagram advertising.

You can run very targeted ads with specific calls to action. The Facebook ad infrastructure is being shared with Instagram. So for paid advertising to extend your business reach you can do the same specific targeting based on interests and behaviors in addition to demographics. In using Facebook’s Power Editor, you also have options for specific objectives and calls to action. An Instagram ad can create brand awareness, but it can also be clickable to your website (unlike a normal post). You can also set objectives for a mobile app install or a video view. Website conversion tracking will be coming soon.

Will This Last?

The Instagram marketing opportunities are exciting right now. As the platform grows I expect they will become less compelling over the next few years. Facebook will need to monetize the audience the same way they have done on the core Facebook platform.

More and more marketers and users may clutter up the Instagram feeds to where they will need to implement something like the Facebook News Feed algorithm to prioritize posts.

As Facebook moves toward more visual content the distinction between Instagram and Facebook may diminish. Facebook is already sharing the ad infrastructure between the two platforms. There may be other technology synergies and integration in the future. Will they continue to have value as two separate platforms or will they converge over time?

As more older adults move on to Instagram, it may no longer be a cool place to be. A new wave of young people may choose yet another social media network to increase interaction away from their parents.

So the time is now to exploit opportunities to grow your business with Instagram marketing. There is still a lot to test and learn about what is most effective to drive business results. There are differences. For example, you can’t post from a desktop to Instagram. You must be on a mobile device. And it’s about beautiful, eye-catching images. See my other blog post on Top Five Instagram Marketing Best Practices for some key elements to keep in mind.

Facebook is making it easier for your small business to engage with customers on mobile devices. They recently announced some interesting new features for Facebook business pages. As they begin to roll out, some people think they could eventually replace your small business website. Others think that they are just a more effective way to drive traffic to your website.

Facebook reports that a billion people visit their business pages every month. And they also report that there are 45 million active businesses on Facebook. The numbers are huge. At the same time (as I’ve blogged about before) more that 50% of Google searches are now done on mobile devices. Also, about 25% of people search for local businesses on Facebook. Facebook is making it easier for your business to be found and accessible on mobile devices.

New features

Not long ago Facebook announced new messaging features to enhance communications with people who like and comment on your business page. Now, rather than having to reply publicly, you can private message the poster. Then last week Facebook announced additional new features particularly targeted at small businesses:

More prominent call to action button – They are testing new buttons for Call Now, Send Message, and Contact Us. The call to action button will also be placed just under the cover photo on a mobile device.

New sections for Shop and for Services – Retailers will be able to list and feature products for sale. Service providers will be able to showcase a list of offerings at the top of the page. Additional sections are still under development.

Mobile-oriented layout – The mobile display of your page will be designed for less scrolling and clicking. It will also introduce section tabs to quickly select what section you want to look at.

The features are starting to show up for some business page managers now and will be rolling out to others over the coming weeks.

Separately, Mark Zuckerberg also confirmed that they are working on:

A Dislike button – He says people have been asking for this a long time. He now sees it as a feature to enable people to express empathy with particular posts. But will it be available on business pages? And will it be an easy way for people to express a negative review?

Why Your Facebook Page Should Replace Your Website

If you are a small business person, you know it’s sometimes complex and time consuming to either build your own website on a hosting service like Wix or Squarespace or to hire a web designer to create and maintain a custom website. On the other hand, Facebook business pages are pretty simple to create, maintain, and update. Facebook pages are already integrated with messaging and with advertising. You don’t need a technical expert.

With the addition of the Shop section, Facebook may be offering an alternative to keep you from going to Shopify or other competitors. Depending on your target audience, Facebook’s Shop section may be as valuable to you as the integration of Shopify and Pinterest with Buy buttons. There is an evolution toward Social eCommerce and Facebook also wants to enable that.

Google and other search engines can index and rank your Facebook page. Then you don’t need to worry about the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of your website.

You don’t need to worry about the mobile display of your business, since Facebook will do that for you.

Why Your Facebook Page Should Not Replace Your Website

If you don’t use Facebook to drive traffic to your website, then you are giving up control. You are at the mercy of Facebook’s terms and conditions and future features. Do you want to be locked into their platform rather than pick and choose the best ways to target your audience? And will their features be sufficient to communicate the unique value proposition of your business and to express your business culture and values? Even with these new features, your options are still fairly limited.

Will the Dislike button be an asset for expressing empathy with your business posts? Or will it become the bane of your existence when misused by an unhappy client or competitor?

What if Social eCommerce on mobile devices doesn’t really work for your business? Can and will your customers make a purchase decision from a small photo and description on a mobile device inside the Facebook app?

Facebook still only displays your posts to 2-6% of your followers unless you have extremely engaged followers or you pay Facebook to boost your posts. You may be locking yourself into a lot of payments to get your content seen.

Risks Outweigh Benefits

I think the risks outweigh the benefits at this stage. While you could rely on Facebook with these new features, I still think the cons outweigh the pros.

What do you think about Facebook’s newly announced features? I know many small businesses who started with a Facebook page and then later built a website. But that was before Facebook became pay to play. Would you be willing to rely on Facebook moving forward for the simplicity instead of doing a simple, small business website?

I have been blessed to meet many wonderful and talented people on my home island of Kauai. One of the things that has also frustrated me is that I have also met business people who went off-island or to the mainland to hire marketing projects and services rather than use Kauai marketing resources.

One of the weaknesses of our collective culture with word of mouth referrals for awareness is that you may be missing out on a great marketing partner in your own backyard.

Yes, with the Internet, we are a global village and web design and other digital marketing work can technically be performed from anywhere. So there is no technical reason not to hire your sister-in-law in Oregon, your friend’s cousin in Minnesota, or a marketing agency in Honolulu.

However, I would argue that their marketing expertise can also be found on Kauai. And they likely lack the day to day intimacy with our culture, values, and unique characteristics.

I understand that in past years there may not have been the maturity and wealth of digital marketing expertise that there is now. Some of it is home grown and some of it has been imported.

Through the Kauai Chamber of Commerce and in other venues I have met a number of the other people on Kauai who have marketing, web design, graphics, email marketing, blogging, and social media marketing expertise.

I would hope after speaking with me that I might be a good fit to assist you with your marketing. But in some cases, I understand there may be a better fit with one of my competitors.

I encourage you to do some web searches, talk with Chamber of Commerce members, and have exploratory conversations with some marketing people you may not have met before. You might be surprised at the wealth of talent you will find!

For a small island I have found there are actually a lot of us who can design custom web sites at affordable prices. Which one is right for you depends on factors such as

time constraints and availability

integration with other external systems

a one-off web site project versus ongoing marketing assistance

personality and fit in working styles and vision

recommendations on how to develop a brand and a marketing strategy and plan

is up to date with latest web design and online marketing trends

I believe a rising tide lifts all boats. Wouldn’t it be great if local Kauai businesses supported other local Kauai businesses and independent contractors? We also provide world-class freelance marketing projects and ongoing marketing services.

I heard from a business person last week telling me she has done social media marketing on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest and listed her products on a very large eCommerce site, but has seen no results. She said, “I’ve tried lots of things, but nothing is working.”

You may be like her or you may be in the group of people who used to do very well on Facebook, but not anymore. You were posting updates and interacting with your audience. New people were becoming aware of your business. People were sending you messages and coming by to buy products or services. But not any more. You are struggling to reach the people who liked your page. Your sales directly attributable to Facebook have declined. You’re not alone.

In my experience there are some simple reasons why your social media marketing is failing in today’s environment. Here are the most common, along with some things you can do about them:

Failing to segment the market and target your specific audiences. You may be doing what I call “spray and pray marketing.” You throw stuff out at everybody and hope that something sticks. You are spending time, effort, and money with low or non-existent results. Success in marketing, especially social media marketing, is to segment the market and create content to meet the needs and desires of each. Social media is “new,” but timeless principals of marketing are not.

Not creating buyer personas. Personas of your typical buyers in each market segment should drive the social media platforms, content, tone, images, ads, and value propositions to communicate with them. It is also the basis for very targeted advertising on social media to augment your organic reach.

Spreading across too many platforms or the wrong platform. In the evolution of social media we are seeing some maturation and segmentation. If you are only using Facebook or Twitter, you may be missing the platform where your target audience spends its most time and engagement. If you are only using Instagram, you may be missing audiences who only use Facebook or LinkedIn. But trying to be everywhere can also backfire. Your content and formats either won’t be optimized or you will spend an excessive amount of time posting natively to each platform.

Focusing on selling something immediately from social media. Marketing is about meeting customers needs profitably over time. I am incredibly annoyed when someone asks me to connect on LinkedIn and then immediately sends me a sales pitch. They know nothing about me or my business. I have expressed no interest in their product or service. They have ruined a potential future business relationship with me by jumping into sales mode. If you have sales people and they are doing this, stop them! They are hurting your business, not helping it.

Driving people to a landing page or web site that is not mobile friendly. As I have blogged before, mobile is where it’s at now. If people go to a page or site they can’t easily read on their mobile device, you have lost them as a potential customer.

Not promoting discovery of your content. You are not using the right hashtags on platforms where they should be used. Or you are using irrelevant hashtags. Or you are not doing keyword research for your personas and creating content that highlights those keywords. Or you are not reaching out to others and engaging on social media so that they may also come and look at your content.

Relying on organic reach. I’ve blogged about this previously. Facebook is now pay to play for businesses. Other social media platforms are moving that direction as they plan and experiment with ways to monetize their users. You must at a minimum pay Facebook to occasionally boost key content to your followers. And you should be considering highly targeted ad campaigns based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. You still have tremendous opportunity for your content to show up between photos of friends and family, but you will have to pay for that privilege to go beyond 2-6% of your followers.

Not being social. The mantra at Social Media Marketing World this year was, “Don’t be on social media. Be social!” Engage with your followers. Ask them questions. Thank them for following you. Reply promptly to comments or questions from them. Use a variety of posts. Remember that people are on social media to stay connected, be entertained, and be informed. They are not there for a hard sales pitch.

Not being visual enough. The posts with the highest engagement are photos and videos. I’m still amazed at how many tweets I see on Twitter without an attached photo. Your content is much more likely to be attention grabbing if you have an image or video. Great images are keys to success on both Instagram and Pinterest.

Driving traffic to a web site without an email opt-in or to a landing page that is not optimized. Despite the hype around social media, the data show that email marketing is still the most effective way to deliver personalized marketing to people over time. They are giving you permission to get to know you better even if they are not ready to purchase from you right now. They are more likely to look at your email after opting in than they are to see your social media posts.

Ignoring data analysis, testing, and adjustment. Digital marketing is unique in being able to give you a wealth of data about what is working, what is not, and whether it is cost effective. It is also fairly easy to do A/B testing. Conversion pixels are making it better to track exactly what converts and what doesn’t. Watch the data. Stop what doesn’t work and do more of what does. There is also research data available online to guide you in areas such as highest converting content, highest converting landing pages, social media post types with the most engagement, best times to post on different platforms to maximize engagement, etc. Your mileage may vary, but this data points to useful starting points so you don’t waste a lot of time and effort. And if you have a personal Pinterest account, convert it to a business account so you get data analytics.

Social media expertise is not the same as marketing expertise. Good marketing is still good marketing. But social media gives us new, cost effective ways to target audiences to drive our marketing objectives. Social media gives us some new tools and communication methods. Social media platforms will continue to evolve and change as more commercial, business features are added.

Have you identified any other reasons why your social media marketing hasn’t worked? Are any of these the reason your social media marketing is failing to produce the desired results?

Instagram is a social media platform that continues to grow in importance to marketers. Especially if your target audience includes 18-40 year olds on mobile devices, this is a place you want to be. But to be effective and generate a return on your marketing investment, there are some Instagram marketing best practices to follow.

Why Instagram?

If you haven’t looked recently at the statistics for Instagram, it’s time to look again. According to recent studies from Pew Research and Iconosquare:

300 million people use it and 75 million are active each day

70 million photos are added each day

more adults use Instagram than Twitter

53% of 18-29 year olds are on it

70% of users have looked for a brand on Instagram

37% of users follow 1-5 brands and 32% follow more than 5 brands

only 28% of marketers are on Instagram

I have to confess I got more focused on Instagram opportunities after two clients in their thirties shared with me how they are active on it, as are their friends. That caused me to re-evaluate my own marketing priorities.

And it’s not only big brands reaping rewards. Many small businesses are also seeing value. Food trucks, restaurants, entertainers, artists, architects, coffee shops, clothing shops, jewelry shops, and many others are building a loyal audience on Instagram who help them to spread their marketing stories and messages.

Best Practices to Follow

As social media platforms continue to evolve and mature, there are a distinct set of best practices to follow on Instagram:

Set up a unique profile – Name is the only thing searchable, so use yours or your business. Make it engaging in 150 characters. What is your very succinct value proposition? Include a link. This is the only place you can include a hyperlink back to your web page or your landing page for an opt-in. Make it so people want to follow you, not just to like one of your random photos. Include something personal or humorous in the bio if possible. Consider using emoticons to make your profile more attention-grabbing and interesting.

Use high quality images and videos – Instagram is about visual content. A picture is worth a thousand words – literally! Use a photo to tell a story about your company, your products, or your services. But constantly posting photos of your products over and over again without telling a story won’t cut it. You’re not there to sell. You’re there to nurture a customer relationship. Post photos that people can relate to and that they care about. Consider showing a behind the scenes view of your business.

Use lots of hashtags – Unlike Pinterest, Instagram engagement is higher with lots of hashtags. One study claimed that posts with 11 hashtags get the most engagement. You may not need 11, but use quite a few so people can find your content and engage with you. It’s also a good idea to create a brand-specific hashtag or to create one for major campaigns and contests. Hashtags help you to get discovered. Look for trending hashtags that you may create relevant content for. Make sure you use relevant hashtags. Don’t be accused of #hashtagabuse by just latching on to a high volume one. Including your location can also help to boost discovery.

Post consistently and be interactive – Ask questions. Reply to comments. Like and share content from your followers.

Run a photo contest or offer special incentives – One way to boost engagement and reach is also to run a photo contest related to your brand. Use a unique hashtag and offer some prizes. Consider other ways you can reward your followers on Instagram with special discounts and promotions or by highlighting and sharing their content.

Note that you can link other social media platforms to your Instagram account, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and foursquare. You can easily cross-post from Instagram to those platforms. Note that Facebook owns Instagram, so expect to see more business and advertising features added over time. Also, it appears that Facebook may currently favor and give higher weighting in the News Feed to content shared from Instagram.

Hope you find these Instagram marketing best practices helpful. Is your business marketing on Instagram? Anything else you would add or tell others to avoid?

When I speak with small and mid-sized business owners I frequently hear objections and questions about the business return from investing in social media marketing. Well, hiring college students to post things for you probably won’t drive results. They are very familiar with social media platforms, but it’s the marketing strategy and content that drive success. And just posting photos of products to sell won’t drive success either.

Consumers are not using social media platforms to be bombarded with sales pitches. They are there to be entertained, inspired, educated, trained, and assisted with some problem.

If your content is not engaging or you are spreading your resources too thinly across too many social media platforms, then you may not see good results. Social media platforms will come and go (remember MySpace?), but your marketing strategy and content should transcend the tools and platforms.

With that said, I have observed these ten tips for social media marketing success:

Focus on engaging content – The objective of social media is to engage your audience. You get the maximum business benefit when they share your content and spread your message for you or when they click through to your website. You also benefit if they like or comment. That is giving you opportunity to interact with them on a personal level. Have a catchy headline. Provide some entertainment, but better yet help your audience to see something in a new light, to get educated on a topic, or especially to solve a problem (what to make for dinner tonight, how to build a stone wall, how the use of social media tools can save them time,……..you get the idea).

Be social – Don’t just be on social media posting photos. Be social and interact with your audience and in social media groups. Add your comments and ask questions for the benefit of others. Share content that may also be of interest to your audience. Be sure to reply to comments promptly or thank people for sharing your content.

Focus on a few social media platforms – Different social media platforms have different audience profiles. For example I recently blogged about the Pinterest audience and tips for that specific platform. You don’t have to be on every social media platform. Some may become more important to you in the future, so you may want to reserve your account name there, but focus on 1-3 that are frequented by your target audience and where you can focus for successful business results.

Don’t sell – This may surprise you, but marketing is not sales. It enables sales. Marketing is about satisfying customer needs profitably over time. Consumers are not looking on social media for sales pitches of goods and services that don’t benefit them at this particular time. But helping them now or entertaining them may engage them so that they become your customer or do repeat business with you over time. For example, I get sales people trying to connect with me directly on LinkedIn to just send me a sales pitch for services in which I have expressed no interest and do not need now. They are wasting their time and annoying me for wasting my time. I wouldn’t be annoyed if they sent me some information that might help to benefit my specific business.

Be visual – The most engaging posts on Facebook now are videos that are native uploads to Facebook. The autoplay feature helps them to catch the eye in a cluttered News Feed. A picture is worth a thousand words. Using photos and videos on your selected social media platforms will get you more attention and communicate more information.

Use hashtags appropriately – Hashtags help people to find your content. A Twitter follower may not see your Tweet in real time, but may search a hashtag for relevant information. Be sure they can find your relevant content. It may also help people searching on Facebook. But be careful on Pinterest. That platform doesn’t like lots of hashtags, so limit yourself to one or don’t use them there. You can research hashtags to use with a tool like hashtagify.me

Make it easy to get more information – If your audience is engaged and wants to find out more about your goods and services, ensure that’s easy for them to do. Have a link to your website and invite them to click it for more information. But also have a landing page that takes them directly to the information they are looking for. That may not be your homepage.

Test and change – One of the benefits of social media is that you can test and change your content pretty easily. Analysis of data from each platform will tell you which content and post types are getting the most engagement. Do more of that and less of the ones not driving engagement. Or test multiple visual images with your content. Certain photos and videos will engage your audience better than others. Once you have posted, monitor the data and be prepared to make changes to be more engaging. I am frequently surprised by what content succeeds or does not succeed to accomplish my own marketing objectives.

Ask for feedback – If you’re not getting feedback or you want to find ways to benefit your audience, ask for feedback. This may be informally in a post or you may want to set up a short survey with a few questions. You may want to offer some incentive for filling out your survey. Surveymonkey.com is an easy tool to create a survey.

Advertise key content – I’ve blogged before that Facebook (and soon other platforms) will be prioritizing and restricting whether your content is shown to your fans/followers. Your business posts on Facebook now reach less than 6% of your fans organically unless you have a very highly engaged, established fan base. Social media marketing used to be completely free. Now and increasingly in the future, it is pay to play. If you have key content (news, a useful blog post, a great video, etc.), then pay to do social media advertising. If you’re just getting started, pay to advertise how your business can benefit people and make it easy for people to click through to your web site. Social media advertising is still relatively inexpensive compared to traditional advertising. And you can monitor results real-time to make adjustments or to cancel ads that are not working.

I hope these ten tips are useful to drive success from your social media marketing investment. Do you have any comments, experience, or other thoughts about these? Or do you have another tip to add to the list? Please share in comments below so we can all benefit.

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I recently got back from the Social Media Marketing World conference. Marketers from 49 countries gathered to network and learn from each other about best practices for social media for business. Some of the information was confirmation of things I am already doing and posting about. But there were also some new tips, tools, and techniques. Equally important was interacting with other marketers to understand their businesses and learn about their successes, challenges, and failures. The world of social media continues to evolve and change quickly. (It was also great to go to a conference for the first time in 25 years that I was just an attendee and not working!)

After some reflection on the conference and recent research I have identified seven key success factors for using social media for business:

Content is your hub: It’s your compelling content that will engage your audience and cause them to interact with your business or brand. (See our related blog post on compelling content.) And people will pay for your knowledge and expertise if you package it up and distribute it in ways they can easily consume it. It may be a product, but it also may be a service or other format. If you have content that answers a question or solves a problem that others have, you have a hub of knowledge to grow your business. Don’t just think about promoting your product or service on social media. Think holistically about your content. How can you help people? How can you answer their questions? How can you help them save time, be more effective, reduce costs, have more fun, etc?

Re-purpose your content for multiple platforms of distribution: Once you have compelling content, you can leverage, re-purpose, and package it in multiple ways for people to consume it. You may be using your compelling content to create a lead funnel for a product or service, or you may be a consultant selling your knowledge. Know your core message and let people experience that in multiple ways. You may use it for live events. You may use it for videos and webinars. You may use it for blog posts. You may share parts of it on social media platforms. You may re-package it into speaking engagements. You may write an e-book. You may create a guide or recipes. You may record a podcast. It’s NOT a sales pitch. It’s helping people to answer a question or solve a problem or be entertained in a way that they want to share with others. Think about how you can reach your target customers in various formats on various platforms.

Use videos and photos – Visual content gains attention on crowded social media platforms. The data show the most engaging Facebook posts are now videos, ahead of photos and status updates. Not only is visual content eye-catching, a picture really is worth a thousand words. People are looking to consume information quickly and easily. Sometimes that is seeing a picture or watching a short video or listening to a podcast while traveling or driving.

Don’t be on social media, be social: In recent years there was tremendous attention on increasing your number of followers or fans. That didn’t necessarily produce business results. While you want to increase the number of potential customers you interact with, the critical success factor is engaging your audience with your business and brand. Being social makes your business human. People do business with other people who can help them. When your audience interacts, they will see more of your posts organically. They also are more likely to share your compelling content with their friends and followers to extend your reach.

Participate and leverage others’ audiences: Beyond being social on your own Facebook page or Pinterest Board, host or participate in social media groups. Demonstrate your expertise, compassion, and humor. Your reputations and abilities become visible to the audiences of others hosting the group.

Email is still the most effective and the most direct: Social media is great for engaging your audience and extending your reach. But the people most likely to become your customers are the ones who are interested enough in your content to opt-in and give you their email address. Email is still the most personal marketing. People are more likely to see and open your email than they are to see your Tweets or Facebook posts. One of the mantras at Social Media Marketing World was “Content is King and Social Media is Queen.” Maybe we should add, “And Email is still the Ace.” Use your compelling content and social media to extend your reach, but also to give you their email addresses.

Don’t assume people will take action: This was an aha! moment for me when I heard from someone running a YouTube channel. He shared that in the beginning he assumed listeners would subscribe to his channel if they listened to the programs and liked them and got value. It wasn’t happening. So he added an explicit call to action asking his viewers to subscribe to his channel. Immediately there was a spike in subscribers. People don’t take action unless you ask them to! In past job roles I was sometimes amazed working with sales people. I would get the prospect engaged with some compelling content and the sales people would not think to ask for the order as the next step. Sometimes I had to prompt them and then the sale would be made. Don’t assume people will take action on their own. Always have a question, next step, or call to action – visit a web page, share the post, subscribe to the channel, etc.

A final thought: If I have just followed you on Twitter or liked your Facebook page or connected with you on LinkedIn, don’t immediately send me an advertisement or try to sell me something. If someone is just starting to engage with you on social media, it does not mean they are ready to purchase something from you right away. It means that there was some interest in learning more and seeing how you might be able to help them. I think this a key point for many businesses and marketers. The objective of social media for business is not direct sales – although stay tuned as Facebook and others add more ecommerce functionality.

Let me know your experience. Do any of these success factors resonate with you? Have you identified other success factors? If you would like to regularly receive updates, please follow Kauai Digital Marketing on LinkedIn or sign up for our email list on our web site.

New tools have come into the market that make it easy for anyone to be a mobile broadcaster. Now anyone can “show” in real-time, not just “tell.” This changes the landscape for broadcasting and social media engagement and also opens up new opportunities and threats for all types of businesses.

The Meerkat app was all the buzz at SXSW. They have already grown to 300,000 users, but have been cut off from Twitter graph functionality. You can still post on Twitter that you are broadcasting. The Periscope app from Twitter created all the buzz in the past week. Since Twitter purchased Periscope in January, they have it pretty well integrated. And there is Google Hangouts on Air that isn’t quite as new and shiny, but still a contender.

Each of these mobile broadcasting platforms has its strengths and weaknesses, but I believe the Periscope app is the real game-changer and will have tremendous benefit to Twitter and to businesses using it. Anyone with a Twitter account can watch live streaming video on Periscope or Meerkat. Anyone with a Gmail address can watch on Google Hangouts on Air. Periscope and Google also archive video streams for later search and viewing. Meerkat does not, but using the #Katch service provides archiving functionality. Just as Instagram has added huge value to Facebook post-acquisition, I believe Periscope will do the same for Twitter. Live streaming video and audio is not always great through these services, but it is certainly good enough. And the lack of quality is offset by the ease of use and immediacy of live streaming.

Google Hangouts for Air is farther along in having an ecosystem of functionality adding to its value for business. For example, you can schedule a broadcast in advance. You can create a landing page for registration and to collect more information on planned attendees or even to collect a payment. Your streaming videos are saved to YouTube with its rich functionality for perpetual archiving and search/recommend functionality. I expect that an ecosystem will also evolve around Periscope to exploit the business possibilities.

For most business broadcasts of importance you will want to schedule them in advance and publicize through all of your social media, web, email, and podcast channels.

Opportunities

Periscope for Business presents a lot of interesting opportunities to connect with your customers real-time and with visual content. Here are some examples:

Product or Company Event – Let your customers be part of the experience live. Let them share comments and Tweet to their followers about highlights.

Panels – You don’t have to wait for a conference to host a panel of experts and foster a dialogue between them and your audience.

Training – A picture really is worth a thousand words. Live and archived training can be produced cheaply and easily, be interactive, and prevent support issues later.

Advice and Discussions – You can show a use case for your product or service and get feedback or you can offer advice on how to optimize value from your product or service while entertaining questions.

On-site visits – You might host a behind the scenes visit to your factory location or to a customer site to see your product or service in action.

Product demos – Show the world how your product works and how it can benefit them while answering questions and getting new ideas for enhancements.

Product launches – You don’t have to gather press and analysts in a room for a launch or at least you can extend your audience online.

Live support – Show rather than tell someone how to solve their problem. Let them follow along in real-time while also potentially benefiting others who have a similar problem/issue.

Realtor open house – Host a virtual open house and get additional viewers who cannot or will not come in person. Get immediate feedback on the property.

Online focus group – Need some quick market research? Have an idea you want to bounce off potential customers? Crowd-source a virtual focus group to share ideas and feedback.

Tourist information – Don’t just post some photos, but let your target audience experience some of the sights and sounds of your destination in real-time.

I’m sure I am just scratching the surface with these ideas and that many other industry-specific ideas may come into your mind. I believe the opportunities to use Periscope for Business are great.

However, it is not all unicorns and rainbows. As with most new technologies, Periscope opens up new threats that will have to managed and possibly regulated.

Threats

The idea that now anyone can be a mobile broadcaster anywhere also presents potential threats to your business. Some that come to mind for me include:

Search – How do you enable your audience to find either live or archived video streams. What if you throw the party and nobody comes?

Copyright infringement – What if someone is mobile broadcasting your copyrighted images, music, or text? How will you know and how can you enforce?

Loss of revenue – What if someone broadcasts an event, concert, musical program, conference, or other content for which you normally charge a fee? How much revenue might you lose?

Privacy – Images of you, your employees, or your customers may be broadcast without their explicit knowledge. Periscope location pinpointing is more granular than just your city and may draw people to a location where you don’t want them.

Journalism and Broadcasting – If you are in the news or blogging business, you now have a whole new set of competitors – anyone around the world with a smartphone!

What do you think? Have you tried Periscope yet? For your industry do you see other Opportunities or Threats in using Periscope for Business? Please share your thoughts and ideas.

Pinterest recently completed another round of funding that values the company at $11B. This is a hefty valuation for a startup that only began selling display ads in January. But growth and demographics have been very attractive. It had been a U.S. growth story, but the number of users outside the U.S. grew more than 135% in 2014.

Pinterest outperforms Twitter and LinkedIn in the time spent on each network. Bing includes Pinterest images in search results. Pinterest has become an important global marketing social media platform.

This is where women go to explore, express, and share their aspirations. 80-85% of users are women and this has been holding steady as the platform grows. 92% of all pins are posted by women. Also, almost half of Pinterest activity happens on tablets.

And Pinterest is one of the fastest growing platforms among millenials. While the average age of users is 40, this is the place to be to reach the desirable group of women buyers who are under 40.

The most pinned categories by women include:

Food and drink

DIY and crafts

Home decor

Holidays and events

So what are some Pinterest marketing best practices to optimize your investment?

Create and name boards using aspirational language of your target audience – Don’t just create a board for each of your products or product categories. Post interesting content. Use aspirational titles like Luxury Spa Bathroom or Dream South Pacific Vacation or Easy Ways to Delight Your Family that will match the searches and aspirations of your target users.

Show a human side to your company – Make it personal. Create a board about your team or your company values and culture.

Use unique images that will capture your audience’s attention – As the user scans over images, make sure yours stand out and catch the eye.

Find the images that capture the most attention and make them cover images for your boards – As you collect data about the most pinned items, look at which images are gaining the most attention and use them as covers for your board.

Don’t push sales, but do include a call to action in your Pins and link back to further information – Users don’t want a product sales pitch. They want interesting content. But be sure to have a link for further information that they can click.

Pin video and audio – 2015 is the year of video on social media. Try some video Pins to capture attention and to show a 3D view or further explanation.

Use “Pin It” and “On Hover Pin It” buttons– with a few lines of code from Pinterest inserted on your web site, users on your site can pin or hover over your images and easily share them on Pinterest. Pinterest provides the Javascript to do this easily.

Add context with Rich Pins – Add additional information to pins for apps, recipes, articles, movies, products, and places. For example, a place pin can include extra information like a map, address, and phone number.

Use hashtags – Hashtags can help you be found in searches, but limit yourself to one or two key ones. Don’t overdo it.

Be social – After all, it is social media. Be responsive and show appreciation to others. Reach out to others to follow them and comment.

Use Pinterest Analytics – Look at the data for which of your pins are most engaging. The images with the most re-pins and clicks are the ones to use for the cover of your boards. This also tells you where to put time and effort for creating new pins.

Join Group Boards – Participate in Groups, but don’t just self-promote. Too much of that will be a turn off. For help with which Groups to join, Pingroupie is a tool that can help to search and sort groups.

Run a contest to generate some buzz – A Pinterest contest can help draw attention and sharing.

Promote Pins with pay per click advertising – Pick pins to promote, specify a target audience, and pay per click for users that click through to your web site.

Don’t forget a couple of other marketing best practices:

You can use Pinterest for competitive research. What are your competitors posting and getting engagement with? How can you improve your value proposition and differentiation?

Cross-promote between Pinterest, your web site, and other social media platforms. Drive complementary engagement across the platforms where your audience can learn more, share more, or take action.

Are you marketing on Pinterest? Do you agree with these best practices? Have you found other Pinterest marketing best practices?

Why think about social media ads? Isn’t social media marketing free and easy? Most of the business people I speak with still think so. After all, it doesn’t require any special training to use Facebook or Instagram. All you do is throw up some posts to engage your target audience with company products, photos, and updates. You just need a young person to assist you. (I hear that a lot, too, from mature business owners.) They are still living in the good old days of social media marketing.

It used to be that social media marketing was just about posting interesting content for your target audience to read and engage. But as social media matures, social media marketing also has to evolve. As we’ve blogged before, your company’s Facebook posts may now only reach 2-6% of your followers organically. The same thing is happening on Twitter and other social media platforms where user feeds are becoming cluttered and crowded. Social media companies are 1) trying to cut through the clutter to show their users the most valuable content and 2) ramping up advertising platforms so they can monetize their huge user bases.

Google Adwords (and other search engine ads) are useful, but no longer sufficient. They are not necessarily the best way to reach your target audience as they go through the purchase decision process. Search engine keywords tend to target early in the decision process for general awareness. Search engine long tail keywords target more specifically and possibly later in the decision process. Social media networks have different ways to target your audience and at different points in the purchase decision:

Facebook: demographics, interests, and behaviors

LinkedIn: industries, job titles, and organizational levels

Pinterest: demographics and interests

Twitter: interests, followers, and keywords

Instagram: age, gender, country – they will also be sharing data with Facebook interests and behaviors

Not only does each search engine or a social media network have unique ways of targeting ads, they each have different audience profiles themselves:

Facebook and Twitter are both very large and cut across age groups, geographies, genders, and interests

Pinterest has a larger segment of younger women – 85% of its users are women

Instagram has a large segment of usage among young people – this is the place millennials go to interact away from older family members

LinkedIn has users who are business people

Wishpond has a good summary of user profiles for each social network that can help determine where you should focus for your target market.

Social media advertising means looking at which social media networks:

Have users in your target audience

Give you effective ways to select and specifically target them

Are cost effective for achieving your marketing objectives

Otherwise you are doing “spray and pray” advertising and wasting your money.

Internet ads now make up 25% of the entire ad market in 2015 (source: Social Fresh). One million small and medium sized businesses advertise on Facebook. And there are 2.5 million Facebook promoted posts. Twitter has not ruled out changes to its news feed algorithm to prioritize posts the way Facebook does. Instagram (owned by Facebook) is expanding its advertising platform to both deal with cluttered feeds and to monetize the user base.

Ad costs on different social media platforms do vary. A Facebook ad will likely be more expensive than a Google Adword, but less expensive than a LinkedIn ad. The ad costs reflect the specificity and effectiveness of targeting for your audience. Match your marketing to the right social media networks for your business. Then look at how social media ads can get your message consistently in front of your followers and your prospects. It’s not like the old days of just posting some interesting content for free.

2015 is the year of social media marketing video. If you look at the statistics of organic reach and engagement, I should be doing this blog post as a video. Video is taking off in 2015. Marketers are jumping on the bandwagon to gain organic reach and to cut through social media clutter to engage customers.

Last week Socialbakers released survey data showing that Facebook photo posts now have the lowest organic reach. Video posts are seen twice as often, followed by text status updates. Here is how Socialbakers’ breakdown of post-based organic reach looked in the fourth quarter of 2014:

Why is this happening?

One reason is clutter. Your customers’ social media feeds are overflowing with content. Marketers are all competing for share of attention and engagement. Video is still less common, so it stands out. And the motion of video (in auto play) catches attention while scrolling. Some marketers are even going back to paper catalogs in the mail to cut through the clutter and integrate with other social media channels.

Another reason is because Facebook, Twitter, Vines, and Instagram are pushing social media marketing video. In 2014 the number of native video posts on Facebook exceeded the number on YouTube. Mark Zuckerberg stated last year that if you look to the future, a lot of content that people will share will be video. Facebook’s algorithm now prioritizes video over photos for display in news feeds. It’s not just Facebook. Twitter is also pushing native video this year.

A third reason is that video is just a better medium for some communications. Explanations, screencasts, and webinars are often more effective ways to tell a story or to show product or service features and benefits. Micro videos via Vines or Instagram may be very effective for a short burst of humor or beauty or amazement.

Social media marketers have historically talked about and striven for video virality. But the data show that after a short viral period engagement goes back to pre-viral levels. I believe the goals should be:

match the medium to the message

strive for engagement and shareability

If marketers just read the headlines, we would all migrate all future content to video. But that will just shift the social media clutter to video instead of photos. What will we do then to break through the new video clutter? It’s the latest fad, but I would argue to think more about matching the medium to your message. Use video when it makes sense and will help you to not only capture attention but also to engage your audience.

Use video when you need to:

explain and demonstrate something

do a webinar to go in depth on a subject

tell a story

show something beautiful

share a heartwarming experience of interaction

interact with people or animals

amaze people with a stunt or feat of adventure

I believe 2015 is the year of social media marketing video. I also predict that many marketers will jump onto the bandwagon blindly. What have your video marketing experiences been so far on social media? What are your plans for 2015?

Facebook ads can be a very effective way to gain awareness of potential customers and to engage customers and prospects over time. It is a critical digital marketing tool for most businesses to establish and nurture profitable customer relationships over time (there’s that definition of marketing again!). Facebook used to be the village square where people and merchants met freely to exchange information and goods. On the small island of Kauai where I live we do this at the local Costco. But Facebook allowed us to do this globally.

The Start of the Shakedown

Ah, the good old days. But then the Facebook ads mafia decided the village square didn’t have to be free for merchants and businesses. They could cleverly extort money from them in order to stay in place or else be relegated to the back alleys. This shakedown scheme began a couple of years ago now. If you were a business on Facebook back in February 2012, you saw an average organic fan reach of 16% with your posts. By March of 2014 you saw an average organic fan reach of 6.51%. (Source: Social@Ogilvy study.) It was even worse for pages with more than 500 likes. In other words, if you didn’t pay up, your reach and performance suffered. If you are a new business developing your social media marketing strategy, be prepared to pay up and pay for advertising to achieve results that were previously free.

Back in 2012 Facebook started changing their algorithm about what would be displayed in News Feeds. So while you still may see that casserole recipe post from Aunt Mary on a regular basis, you are not seeing all the photos posted by a big box store you follow. Many businesses have tried increasing the number of posts in order to tread water with the total reach that they previously had. But is that achieving the desired business result? Is your objective just to get something in front of a person with your business name associated, or is your business objective for them to do something (click your website, signup for a newsletter, go to your ecommerce site, contact you, etc.). Most of us would say the latter. So where it used to matter how many “likes” you had to establish a fan base, now what matters is the cost per desired engagement. Note that I say “desired engagement” as opposed to Facebook’s “engagement” defined as like, comment, or share.

Engagement in Facebook’s terms means that someone reacted to the photo or status

Note that Facebook’s reported metrics may still not be accurate for either reach or engagement, although they continue to improve. I know from my own Facebook ads that in auditing some engagements on posts, I found that the person was not at all in my defined target audience. So there is still plenty of room for improvement. Your mileage may vary.

What Can You Do?

You really have two primary alternatives:

1. Create extremely engaging content that will be widely shared within your target audience so that Facebook displays your posts more often.

OR

2. Pay up or suffer the consequences – buy ads and pay for boost posts to your specific targeted audience or be sidelined by Facebook

Extremely Engaging Content

According to TechCrunch, Facebook’s algorithm takes a large number of factors into consideration when deciding how much to display your content. But the main factors for News Feed Visibility are:

Interest – Has the user expressed interest in you before or your type of business/content?

Post performance – How well did this post perform with other users?

Creator – How has other content you created before performed with users?

Type – Is it a photo, status, video, or other, and does this match the type preferred by this user?

Recency – Is it new or stale?

and about 100 other factors

If you already have a lot of “likes” then you have an advantage, but no guarantee of success.

Pay Up - Buy Facebook Ads and Boost Posts

If you’re new to the game or you want to do more than just tread water with your fans/prospects/customers, then it’s time to pay up. But first make sure you are clear on your business objective and on your target audience. Otherwise you will be wasting money. Back in December 2014 Facebook announced a new feature of Call to Action buttons on business pages. This will help move someone to action if they actually visit your Facebook page. But how many will? And how many will just look at your post and move on? So think carefully about your target audience, what post content will engage them, and what desired action they should take as a result? In my case, having someone “like” my post isn’t very valuable to my business. I don’t know if that person will do anything else or remember my company of if they just like the photo that I posted. I want them to come to my web site, learn more, and either sign up for a newsletter to stay in touch or contact us. It’s good if they like our page as a secondary objective to have some connection to us. Your objectives may be different in order to grow your business.

Besides having a Facebook page with a Call to Action button and a page full of interesting content, what makes an individual post compelling for someone to take action?

First, you have to capture their attention visually as they scan through a News Feed or sidebar:

An eye catching image

A video

A compelling quote or status update (some people argue that text posts are now cutting through the clutter of picture posts in order to get more attention)

Once you have captured their attention, you need to have some compelling content that causes them to take action, whether that is to like your post, click through to your web site, like your page, or start shopping. See our related blog post on compelling content for some ideas on how to keep attention once you have grabbed it!

Finally, be sure to create more than one ad to test and measure. Be prepared to make modifications based on performance metrics. It is not a “set it and forget it” system. Monitor your dashboard and be prepared to cancel, revise, or kill ads based on your testing and results.

Do you have a Facebook page that the reach has declined? Have you done Facebook advertising? How did it compare to Google Ad Words for you? What have been the business results? Please share.

I was honored last evening to be featured as a new member at the Kauai Chamber of Commerce Annual General Membership Meeting. I am so pleased to be a part of these talented business professionals, to get acquainted, and to become part of the community. There is so much entrepreneurial spirit here across a number of industries.

As a new member I had a display table to do some traditional event marketing with other local businesses. It was great to meet new people and to learn about their business ventures. I was in between the dancers from ‘Auli’i Lu’au and the Westin Princeville Ocean Resort Villas. While I focus now on digital, online marketing, I have also done a lot of traditional marketing in my prior roles in technology and consulting companies. You may have a business where you can rely solely on digital marketing, but many businesses still need a mix of both. As a business and marketing professional, I would not hesitate to recommend a mix if it were the right fit. There is still a huge value to connect with others in your own industry as well as in others and to form those relationships both in person and online.

One of the things that I love about being located on the island of Kauai is the common view that we are all in this canoe together. The canoe is such an important part of Hawaiian history and culture. It is such a powerful symbol to me that when we row and steer in a common direction we all reach our destination faster and safer. This is part of the culture and values of Kauai that drew me to locate here. For the canoe to move forward, we need to work together. All as one. One canoe, one ohana, one community. And I believe it is a strong value to guide our business interactions.

KaiKini Case Study of Traditional and Digital Marketing

In learning about the business ventures of others based here, I was especially struck by the story of the founder and CEO of KaiKini Bikinis. She shared with me how she started with an idea and vision and acquired the skills she needed along the way. She envisioned designing and making bikinis in her unique style and optimized for wear while being active. She did not know how to sew, but she bought some commercial sewing machines, experimented, and taught herself to not only design but also to manufacture the pieces. She used traditional marketing and selling to get some local stores to carry her pieces as part of starting her business. She also focused on digital marketing and began social media marketing to engage her customers and to gain further visibility. She got additional retailers on other islands to stock her products. As the business started to grow, she hired others to train to sew. And she taught herself to set up a website. She now has several employees and continues to grow her business as a manufacturer and wholesaler while also selling directly worldwide via her ecommerce website at kaikini.com. She uses blogs and social media marketing as well as Google Adwords PPC ads in her digital marketing mix. A consultant manages her PPC ads for her so she can devote her time to other business initiatives. She uses BigCommerce as her web hosting and tools provider. What an inspiration that she has built a business to market and sell Hawaiian-made products all over the world. And the digital marketing and sales are a key growth area of her business!

I have heard the question of whether a Kauai small business needs social media marketing. On the island of Kauai we have a small town culture. People take time to talk story with each other. People know people who know people. There are a lot of word of mouth business referrals. But there are also many businesses whose target customers include not only locals, but also visitors. Small businesses here and in other parts of the world are wondering what to do about social media marketing and whether it is worth the time and effort. As a small business owner your goal should not be excellence at social media. Your goal should be to increase your business by picking and choosing some social media marketing that will reach your customers and prospects cost effectively. You could get social media training to do it yourself or you could hire someone to write and manage marketing content for you.

Why Kauai small business social media marketing matters

Gain awareness of your target audience, whether locals, transplants, or visitors: People increasingly look for information online and on the go. There are local Facebook groups for causes and for rants and raves. There are locals, transplants, and visitors not only searching the web, but also searching social media for Kauai information, products, and services. Kauai small business is fortunate to have many repeat visitors. What are you doing to stay in touch with them and make sure they do business with you on their next visit? What are you doing to encourage them to share information about your business with friends and neighbors who may also visit sometime? Social media is another place to find out about your small business and to stay connected over time. It is also a fast and affordable place to do A/B testing of content to see what your target customers responds to most and where they do it from.

Drive traffic to your web site: Having a web site is a basic start for online marketing. Getting your web site noticed, though, is the goal for attracting new business. Social media visibility and sharing useful content for your target audience can help to drive people to your web site for more information and to take action. Or it may cause their friends and neighbors to become aware of your web site by seeing a “like” or share.

Capture contact info for email marketing and newsletters: Sharing interesting content in social media may be the hook to get someone interested in your Kauai small business. You now have a reason for them to give you their contact info and to sign up for email updates or a newsletter. They may become aware of your blog posts and updated useful content that will cause them to come to your web site and fill out a form to contact you. Yes, it’s good to have this on your web site. But you can use social media to interest people in contacting you.

Induce trial of your product or service: In addition to generating awareness through social media, you may also be able to induce a trial of your product or service. Providing useful, interesting content can cause them to take action to request more information or to visit your shop. You might also offer a special promotion on social media for a free sample at a certain time that creates an urgency and excitement to be shared with other friends and neighbors.

Foster customer relationships and repeat business: Social media marketing is also a great way to retain customers, to deepen customer relationships, and re-inforce their buying behavior with you. We feel proud as consumers when we see an ad or promotion for a brand that we use and with which we have a positive relationship. Your customers will feel a much stronger connection to your business by also knowing more about you, your suppliers, your employees, your locations, etc. We all like a peak behind the scenes and to feel like we are insider.

Create social media referrals in addition to word of mouth referrals: This is a real strength of social media marketing. Humorous, emotional, or just useful content doesn’t have to go viral to benefit your business. But having your customers’ friends and contacts seeing and hearing about your brand is an online word of mouth that can spread much faster and certainly much wider than just talking story at the farmer’s market or other local gathering spot. What are the chances that your small business will come up in conversation? But if there is useful or interesting information on social media, that can be seen by or shared with others.

How a Kauai small business can get started

Social media marketing for a Kauai small business takes some time and effort. But you don’t have to be everywhere. Work with an advisor to pick and choose the platforms that make the most sense for your target customers. Focus on one or a few. Don’t try to be an expert on every social media platform. Focus on the content to be interesting, humorous, emotional, useful (see our other blog posts on compelling content). It’s not about selling. It’s about communicating, gaining awareness, inducing trial, and fostering customer relationships. Test to see what works and to focus your efforts on those that produce real results to grow your business.

So if you are a Kauai small business, you can likely survive without social media marketing, but will you thrive?

You may be looking at our site and wondering if you could do all this yourself. Can’t anyone do online and social media marketing? The answer is yes. There is nothing magic here. It is not rocket science. But will you or should you do it yourself? It’s

time consuming

requires learning new skills

needs new tools

is easy to forget or de-prioritze

Marketing strategy

You know the most about your business. You’re the one who runs it every day. You may know the most about your current and potential customers. You can talk to your own customers and prospects to understand their buying behavior and how they search and use information online related to your product or service. You can research and monitor your competitors online. You can create your own logo and brand identity or hire a graphic designer to assist. You can research marketing best practices and new technologies. It takes time. It may take even more time until you have gained some experience.

You could use a soup to nuts digital marketing platform, like HubSpot. It will cost you more money, but it will provide all the tools and already has them integrated. We looked at HubSpot for our business, but thought we could be more economical, have more flexibility, and do our own integration to achieve a higher return on investment. Many small and medium-sized businesses are going this direction for digital marketing. It’s not cheap and it will take time. You will be locked into their tools and integration platform, but it may easier and faster to do it this way. And you have complete control of what or what isn’t done.

Web site

Yes, you can develop a web site. There are tools available now to do a simple web site using drag and drop. It will get you a web site, but will it communicate in the way your audience looks for information? Will it lock you into using one particular company’s technology? Are they stable and well-established or are they a start-up that may disappear?

We use WordPress to develop a web site. You could install and learn it, too. It’s the most popular web site development tool. You could take a class on it. It will still take some trial and error to learn the ins and outs. And there are lots of options, like themes and plugins to consider and choose as part of your design. You will also have to register a domain name, select a web hosting service, and install whatever web design tool you choose.

You can choose the topics and write/edit your own blog posts. You can keep your site up to date both with the latest technology updates and compelling content.

You can also learn and do SEO (search engine optimization).

Email newsletters

You can also do this on your own. You will need to manage your own email list. You will need a design for your newsletters. You will need to write and edit. You could use a service for this, like Constant Contact.

Social media marketing

You can decide which social media platforms you want to use for your customers. You can write, schedule, and post compelling updates. You can decide whether or not to run ads on social media. You can create and post ads and monitor their results. It just takes getting familiar with each platform, best practices for using it, etc. You can also get a tool like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to help manage and monitor your social media marketing. We use Hootsuite so that we can schedule posts across multiple social media sites at once.

Analytics

You can set up Google tracking code for your web site and use Google Analytics to analyze its performance (and performance of your social media to drive web site traffic) relative to your marketing strategy. You can get and monitor analytics for ads placed on social media sites. It’s all available online. You can read about it or take a course. It takes some time and some analytical skills.

So yes, you can do all this digital marketing stuff yourself. Do you have the skills or the time to acquire the skills? Is it where you want to use your management time and creativity?